WAITING FOR ROSES FLOATS GET DRESSED UP FOR BIG DAY.

Byline: Jennifer Hamm Staff Writer

PASADENA - The clock is ticking and excitement is building as thousands of volunteers work night and day decorating the Tournament of Roses parade floats for a handful of cities around the San Fernando Valley.

With the first round of judging just two days away, decorators are artfully applying everything from shaved bark to fresh daisies to floats for Glendale, Burbank and La Canada Flintridge.

``We're ahead of schedule,'' said Glendale Mayor Dave Weaver, who is spending the week overseeing the completion of his city's float, with a ``Hometown Slugger'' theme.

The 25-foot-tall float is among a dozen being decorated in Pasadena's Rose Palace. The remainder of the 52 floats entered in the New Year's Day parade are being built at other locations.

The floats will roll along Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena, accompanied by marching bands, horseback riders and others in the annual parade that is telecast to a worldwide audience.

In Burbank, hundreds of community residents are decorating a float with ``The All American Barbershop Quartet'' as its theme. Working at the city's public service department yard on Lake Avenue, the volunteers are among the rare few who design and build their own floats. Companies are hired to coordinate the creation of most Rose Parade floats, including Glendale's.

Burbank's float features four types of animals that will sing and dance along the parade route. Steve Edward, vice president of the Burbank Tournament of Roses Association, said he'll be sitting inside the float operating the 16 hydraulic mechanisms animating the the characters as they entertain the crowd.

``This is probably one of the more complicated floats Burbank has put out,'' Edward said.

In Pasadena, volunteers carefully walked along the crisscross of gang planks on Wednesday as they pasted shaved bark on the Glendale slugger's mustache and hair.

Madonna Fabian, 15, of Glendale, who said she was glad to be given floor duty, sponged white rice onto the side of the float. The Holy Family High School student said she is looking forward to attending the parade with her family members Monday so she can show them which sections of the float she decorated.

``It's entertaining,'' Madonna said as she crouched and meticulously dabbed the grains of rice.

Other volunteers filled small plastic tubes with water to hold stems of flowers that will be placed on the float.

Because of the warm weather, Weaver said decorators may wait until Friday to put the fresh flowers on the float. But the float must be finished by Saturday for the first round of judging.

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Photo:

Glendale volunteers make a ball slugger's mustache out of plant fibers Wednesday for their city's Rose Parade float.

David Sprague/Staff Photographer